The newly-unveiled Samsung Infuse 4G on AT&T may be one of the thinnest Androids around, but what does it take to get so slim? Obviously, engineers are going to have to make some trade-offs when trying to craft the most svelte smartphone they can imagine; you can easily reduce a phone’s size and weight by shrinking the battery, but that trade-off of reduced battery life may be more than users are willing to put up with. Without some more insight into the process that brought the Infuse 4G to life, we can’t say for sure if one particular decision was made to help keep the phone slender, but there’s no doubt that the Android has one of the oddest microSD slot configurations you’ll find.

While it may not be as annoying to get to as some of the sticker-covered microSD cards in Windows Phone 7 devices, the Infuse 4G is definitely in close running with them. As expected, the flash memory card is hiding in the battery compartment, but this time Samsung has stuck it underneath of, and perpendicular to, the phone’s SIM card. That’s unusual, sure, but the really odd part? The microSD card is installed upside-down, with its contacts facing away from the phone’s body.

As a result of this upside-down configuration, you can’t pull on the lip at the bottom edge of the label-side of the microSD card to get a grip on it when trying to remove it. At least it’s spring-loaded to help you get at the card’s edges, but it still looks like a decent struggle for users with larger hands to try removing the microSD. Our advice: swap that 2GB card out once for a larger one, then leave it be.